


These Inconvenient Fireworks

by FoxGlade



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-08 22:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14703432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: In a world full of uncertainties, there are some things Ben Arnold knows, down in his bones. Apparitions are real, and a pain in the ass. Supernatural was never meant to get more than five seasons. Emily Potter is the love of his life.Sammy Stevens is the love of his life, too. Just not this life.





	These Inconvenient Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> hey who wants to talk about the dismissal of platonic relationships as "less than" romance, and also how ben and sammy are for sure absolutely 100% soulmates. because apparently i wanted to talk about it for a little under 2k words.
> 
> title from stray italian greyhound by vienna teng, which was absolutely the entire inspiration for this fic. thanks to nellie (@reyroace) for going off about the virtues of eating bread out of the freezer at the greek festival today. i did all this for you, u disgusting little ben arnold man.

 

In a world full of uncertainties, there are some things Ben Arnold knows, down in his bones. Apparitions are real, and a pain in the ass.  _ Supernatural  _ was never meant to get more than five seasons. Emily Potter is the love of his life.

Sammy Stevens is the love of his life, too. Just not this life.

  
  


 

It's the tiniest of moments, when he knows. A week before their first anniversary show, sitting in Rose’s diner and arguing over an age-old question.

“Just pick one! You don't have to believe in them, it's hypothetical,” Ben says. It's not. He'll get Sammy to believe one day. Sammy just shakes his head.

“It's pointless,” he replies. “If I say vampires, you'll just make up some reason they're better than werewolves. If I say werewolves, you'll just say vampires have, I don't know, laser eyes or something.”

“Established lore only,” Ben says firmly.

“What does that mean!” Sammy says incredulously, pointing his fork at Ben.

Before Ben can get into the detailed differences between established and speculative lore, the waitress walks by and tuts.

“Isn't that a little tasteless?” she chides.

“It's all he knows,” Sammy says. Ben throws a blueberry at him.

“Sorry, Rachel,” Ben says. Sammy tries to steal a forkful of Ben’s pancakes, ignoring his own soggy French toast, and Ben bats him away. “Just trying to get Sammy into the King Falls spirit.”

“Don't you mean spirits?” Sammy says. Ben flips him off. Sammy steals a piece of pancake.

“Let him be Scully if he wants,” Rachel says with a shrug, and refills Sammy’s coffee. Ben holds his own mug out and she gives him a hard look before reluctantly topping it up. He's almost broken her of any concern for his caffeine intake by now. “You could probably do with some balancing in this area, Mulder.”

“You'd look sexy with red hair,” Ben tells Sammy. Sammy chokes on his mouthful of coffee and starts wheezing, a chunk of chewed up pancake falling from his mouth directly into his coffee.

This is a moment, Ben realises. In the few seconds where Sammy continues to wheeze, Ben’s stomach gives a distinctive lurch, his heart beats just that little bit faster, and he thinks,  _ oh.  _

Falling in love with Emily Potter was easy. He was already smitten at first sight, and just talking to her for a few minutes was enough to cement the feeling. 

Falling in love with Sammy Stevens is apparently less of a love at first sight thing, and more of a love at first horrendously gross and embarrassing public incident thing.

Or at least, that's what this moment feels like. Sammy’s frantic coughing is starting to ease, but Ben continues staring. In an instant he can picture it: going about their days like always, but with footsies under the table, lunch dates at the new pizza place on main street, pet names over the radio. The same, but… more.

Sammy finally recovers his breath. He reaches for the coffee to take a drink, then presumably sees the chunk of floating pancake in it and grimaces. Ben’s heart twists in his chest.

He's not egotistical enough to think that Sammy's whole life revolves around him, but they have spent almost all of the past year together, and in all of that time Sammy's never given any indication that he wants anything more from Ben. Maybe he’s wrong, and he should take a chance, but if he isn’t? He’ll have to live with that. And if he’s learned anything about himself since high school, it’s that if he lets himself do this right now, he’s going to fall hard and fast and completely irreversibly. 

And isn’t what they already have more than enough?

“You okay, Ben?” Sammy asks. Ben shakes the moment off _.  _

“I take it back,” he says, swallowing the  _ I love you  _ in his throat and pushing the thought out of his head. “Nothing's gonna make you look sexy after that.”

Sammy throws his fork at him, and Ben dodges and kicks Sammy in the kneecap, and the next time he thinks about this moment, it's with a weird sort of clarity. This was somewhere his life could have gone differently, he knows, with that bone-deep certainty.

But Emily Potter vanishes into the sky one week later, so he doesn't think about that moment for a long time.

  
  


 

He's looking up at that same sky now. One day before their fifth anniversary show, and they're sitting on the front steps of the house they share. Ben had wanted to climb up onto the roof, but he'd also wanted to crack into some beers, and Sammy had said they could do one or the other, not both. So here they are, drinking in silence and watching the stars.

Sammy’s watch beeps, marking the midnight hour, and Ben twitches. Sammy looks over with a smile. “Big day tomorrow,” he says, and then grimaces like he knows how needless a sentence that was. Ben nods anyway and fiddles with the label peeling off his bottle.

“A good day,” he replies. Sammy hums. 

“Nervous?”

“Nah.” Ben leans back against the stairs, thinks better of it when the wood digs into his spine, then leans against Sammy instead. Sammy automatically lifts an arm to tuck him against his side and Ben smiles through a rush of fondness. “I'm excited, y’know?”

Sammy laughs, a low sound, and adds, “I've been waiting for this for six years. I know.”

“Six years?” Ben repeats. “Dude, that's like, the longest engagement ever. Hold on, let me look up the record.” He fumbles for his phone, but Sammy laughs again and waves him off.

“Five and a half,” he says. “He proposed at Thanksgiving. But I knew for six years.”

“You knew..?” Ben says, teasing it out. Sammy shoves him lightly.

“I knew I wanted to marry him, you goof,” he says. His tone is full of affection and Ben slumps back against his side, grinning. “There was this… I don't know. A moment.”

“A moment?” Ben asks, voice muffled in Sammy’s ribs. 

“Mm. He was taking out the trash and the bag split. It was early in the morning, we were barely awake, and he just stood there staring at this garbage all over our kitchen floor.” Sammy snorts and his shoulders shake slightly. “And then he crouches down, grabs half a muffin from the pile, and shoves it in his mouth.”

“He  _ what, _ ” Ben says, with horrified delight.

“It was terrible,” Sammy confirms. “He didn't even realise what was wrong for another few seconds. But all I could think was, ‘damn, if this doesn't make me fall out of love with him, nothing can’. And I've been right so far.”

Ben processes this for a moment. “Glad you didn't see me eating bread out of the freezer this morning,” he says eventually. “We might've had to call the wedding off.”

Sammy laughs again. It really is Ben’s favourite sound. “You're not that powerful,” he says, and then he falls quiet again. It's a full kind of silence, and Sammy looks at his hands like he's turning something over in his head, so Ben stays silent as well.

“I almost fell in love with you, once,” Sammy says eventually, softly, but with a wry smile. “It wasn't anything like with Jack. You were just sitting there, on the other side of the desk, and you said something so sweet to Mary Jensen…”

“What'd I say?” Ben asks, not fully taking in the implications of what Sammy is saying.

“Hell if I know. I freaked out and asked for a break so I could hide in the office for a minute.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Ben says. He feels Sammy take a deep breath and feels a little bad about the jab. But before he can say anything, Sammy continues, “It never -- I didn't let myself think about it. Which, I know, repression is bad, but -- I still wasn't handling anything. I couldn't deal with  _ that  _ on top of everything else.”

“I get that,” Ben says, as gently as he can. Sammy’s progressed in leaps and bounds with his various issues, especially since getting Jack back, but some things are still hard to think about. 

“I never even planned on telling you,” Sammy says, shrugging. “I didn't want anything to change…”

Something finally clicks into place in Ben’s head. “Wait,” he says, “when was this?”

Sammy looks down at him. “Sometime after our second Christmas together,” he says. He sounds vaguely suspicious.

“Huh. It didn’t match up,” Ben murmurs, still reeling a little. Sammy leans away so he can meet Ben’s eyes.

“What didn’t?” he asks.

“I was in love with you for like, five seconds, but that was just before our first anniversary,” Ben says absently. He’s not really seeing Sammy right now, preoccupied with this revelation as he is. “I figured you wouldn’t be interested. And I’d just seen you spit half your pancakes into your coffee, so like, no big loss.” 

He snaps out of his thoughts to Sammy laughing, harder than he has all night. “Hey! I’m confessing, here!”

“Sorry,” Sammy chuckles, “I'm just... realising what might have been. Would've been a different life.”

It’s weirdly close to how Ben has been thinking of it. “Yeah,” he says, a little thrown, and then, “Wait, no, would it? I mean, we live together. We're partners. Dude, we're getting married tomorrow, how different could it be?”

“Getting married to other people,” Sammy corrects, rolling his eyes. “Just because it's a double ceremony, it doesn't mean--”

“It totally means we're also kind of married,” Ben interrupts. “Emily and Jack agree, you're absolutely outnumbered on this. But besides the obvious stuff… I don't think it'd be that different, dude.”

For a second it seems like Sammy’s about to argue the point, but instead, he smiles and shakes his head. “I’d still be dragging your ass out of bed every day,” he says. Ben beams and nudges his shoulder against Sammy’s.

“I'd still be stealing half your coffee most nights,” he says.

“Try every night, you goofball. You know caffeine stunts your growth, right?”

“That’s a myth! And not a King Falls one either, where it’s secretly true.”

“We’d still be arguing like this.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, dude.” He settles back under Sammy’s arm and looks up at the stars. “Seriously, though. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

He can hear the smile in Sammy’s voice a moment later when he replies, “Me, neither.”

There's some other life out there for the both of them. One where Ben took a chance, or Sammy spoke up, and they got all the little moments of more that Ben had imagined for a second in a diner at six in the morning. But in that life, every moment of  _ more  _ would’ve had a corresponding moment of  _ less.  _

It would’ve been a good life, he knows, down in his bones. But this one is better.


End file.
